WELL SUITED: A researcher plays mama bear for a cub in China's Wolong National Nature Preserve. Photo: Reuters

HAPPY FAMILY: The 4-month-old cub, who was boxed up by a costumed caretaker and taken to the lab, gets a checkup from scientists at the Hetaoping Research Center. (Reuters)

HAPPY FAMILY: The 4-month-old cub, who was boxed up by a costumed caretaker (above) and taken to the lab, gets a checkup from scientists at the Hetaoping Research Center. (REUTERS)

See the cuddly giant pandas looking after their 4-month-old cub so tenderly?

Now, look again.

The adults are actually scientists wearing panda costumes, grinning and bearing it to make sure the cub doesn’t see any humans at the Wolong Giant Panda Reserve Center in China’s Sichuan province.

The cub, who was born in captivity, is being prepped to be introduced into the wild. Researchers became pretend pandas because they believe that the lack of human contact is important for the panda’s survival in their natural habitat.

The cub currently lives in a protected forest area that’s fenced off and where hidden cameras let caretakers keep a close eye on it. Whenever scientists need to take its temperature or give it a physical, they put on their panda outfits.

The innovative approach was developed at the Hetaoping Research and Conservation Center for the Giant Panda in Wolong after the first panda researchers there released into the wild, Xiang Xiang, was found dead in a forest in 2007.

Xiang Xiang had toppled from a tree probably after he was chased by other pandas who considered him a threat.

“We chose Xiang Xiang because we thought that a strong male panda would have a better chance of surviving in the harsh natural environment,” The Times of London quoted Li Desheng, deputy director of the Wolong center, as saying in May 2007.

Xiang Xiang, who weighed 176 pounds when he was released in April 2006, had mastered survival skills, like building a den and foraging for food, and defensive skills, like howling and biting, the paper said. Scientists tracked his progress with a GPS device attached to his collar.

Researchers are putting their heads together to find ways to release captive-bred cubs into the wild because pandas face daunting odds. There are only about 1,600 wild pandas in the forests of central China, the only place they can be found, The Times said. Another 120 live at breeding centers and zoos in China, and there are about 20 making their homes in zoos elsewhere.

The unidentified cub in these pictures, which were snapped last week, was born to a captive mother this summer at the Hetaoping Center and now weighs 18 pounds, London’s Guardian reported yesterday.

If everything goes well, it will become the first cub since Xiang Xiang to go back to its natural environment, the newspaper said.

Conservationists have been trying to think outside the box to give cubs bred in captivity the skills they need to live in the wild.

One method they’re trying is to show pandas wildlife DVDs to help teach them about sex and how to bring up their young, The Guardian said.